The Bruins have extended a qualifying offer to Jordan Caron, agent Kent Hughes confirmed to the Daily News on Monday afternoon.

The team had until 5 p.m. Monday to extend the offer. General manager Peter Chiarelli qualified his other restricted free agents by last week, but waited on Caron as he explored moving the forward.

“He’s still young,” Chiarelli told reporters Saturday at the NHL Draft in Philadelphia. “He’s been in and out of our lineup. In fairness to him, maybe we’ve looked for another spot for him. That’s one of the reasons we haven’t QO’d him yet.

“It wasn’t a request from Jordan. He wants to stay in Boston. But at his age, he also wants a chance to play.”

Asked what Caron being qualified means for his status with the Bruins moving forward, Hughes declined comment, only to say he expected it would be worked out in the next week or two.

Caron is now a restricted free agent. He can accept the qualifying offer, which comes in $704,000, a 10 percent increase from his 2013-14 salary of $640,000.

Chiarelli can still look to trade Caron for an asset. A previous example of trading an RFA, albeit of a much higher profile, was the Phil Kessel deal in 2009. If Caron stays with the Bruins through the summer, they'll have a cheap 13th forward.

The Bruins have a little over $5.6 million in cap space. Priorities include re-signing unrestricted free agent Jarome Iginla and RFAs Reilly Smith and Torey Krug.

Had the Bruins not qualified him, he would have become an unrestricted free agent.

The 23-year-old Caron, a first-round pick (No. 25 overall) in 2009, scored one goal and two assists in 35 games last season, and added one goal in seven playoff games. He has 12 goals and 16 assists in 123 career games.

Caron was a healthy scratch for the final four games of the second-round series with the Canadiens in favor of call-up Matt Fraser.

The Bruins asked Caron to be more aggressive offensively and use his 6-foot-3, 204-pound frame around the net last season. He responded early and looked like a different player in the early stages of the season, but that didn't hold for the length of the season.

Coach Claude Julien praised Caron for his defensive work and for plugging in on different lines throughout the season.